Devan Barlow

It’s rare for a book to start with calling a baby ugly. Yet on the first page of J.D. Beresford’s 1911 novel The Hampdenshire Wonder, our narrator is joined in his railway compartment: I looked up when the woman entered my compartment, though I did not notice the name of the station. I caught sight of the baby she was carrying, and turned back to my book. I thought the child was a freak, an abnormality; and such things disgust me. This baby is the titular Hampdenshire Wonder.

This essay details a modest exegesis on Clive Barker’s gospels of the monstrous body. Read together, Barker’s novellas The Hellbound Heart (1986) and Cabal (1988) make a twofold argument: That the monstrous body is in fact monstrous, and that this monstrous body possesses a power which can’t be co-opted by hegemonic institutions. Rather than allow themselves to be used and discarded by the state, Barker’s monsters construct an alternative society: the mutantopia.

Content warning: Show warnings Stretching from blade to blade perched atop the grass resisting the pressure of dew So those of us still in the skies, stringing webs between cloud wisps will see our work below and know where to land [Editor’s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a gift from Martin McGrath during our annual Kickstarter.] Like this: Like Loading...